Wonder Woman Did Blockbuster Ratings With Its TV Premiere on HBO

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Wonder Woman continues to wow: This weekend’s TV debut of the DC Comics blockbuster gave HBO its biggest audience for a feature film premiere in two years, and even managed to outrate cable coverage of the Olympics. Per Nielsen, 2.809 million viewers caught the pay cable network’s initial Saturday night telecast of Wonder Woman, outdrawing NBC Sports Network’s prime-time telecast of the 2018 Winter Games by about 300,000 viewers. The Gal Gadot–led film drew the biggest single-day audience for an HBO movie premiere since the Rock’s San Andreas, which — minus any Olympics competition— attracted a statistically insignificant 11,000 more viewers (2.820 million) on February 27, 2016. Wonder Woman also drew more viewers than any of the other films in the modern DC Comics extended universe, including Man of Steel (2.374 million), Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2.33 million),and Suicide Squad (2.13 million). A Sunday evening rerun ofthe film delivered another 1.6 million viewers, giving HBO its best Sunday movie ratings since a 2014 encore of Furious 6. None of these numbers include audiences who chose to DVR HBO’s showings of the film or who opted to watch via HBO’s streaming platforms, so the actual viewer tally will end up being much higher.

Unfortunately for HBO, the great Nielsen news didn’t extend to its new drama Here and Now. Despite getting a massive lead-in from the rerun of Wonder Woman, producer Alan Ball’s latest effort brought in a mere 541,000 viewers with its linear premiere Sunday. In addition to ranking behind the opener of the quickly canceledVinyl(which debuted to 764,000 viewers in February 2016), Here and Now appears to be one of — and maybe the — least-watched HBO drama premiere ever, at least in the post-Sopranos era. While its overall audience number should go up sharply once DVR replays and multi-platform views get counted — particularly given its debut opposite the Olympics — the tepid early response suggests Here and Now may soon be headed six feet under.